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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24718561">who calls at two in the morning?</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Random_ag/pseuds/Random_ag'>Random_ag</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Bendy and the Ink Machine</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Hurt, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Knives, Mild Blood, Pain, Post-Canon, Referenced Hospitalization</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 01:07:31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,086</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24718561</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Random_ag/pseuds/Random_ag</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>From the end of the receiver came a garbled cry that sounded like its existence was possible only by tearing lungs.<br/>It sounded like a plea for help.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>who calls at two in the morning?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Phone.</p><p>Damned phone.</p><p>Screaming phone.</p><p>Who calls at two in the morning?</p><p> </p><p>“Who’s it?”</p><p>“Malcolm.”</p><p> </p><p>He awoke completely.</p><p> </p><p>“Malcolm.”</p><p>“Joey?”</p><p>“Malcolm, I… Malcolm.”</p><p>“Joey, I’m here.”</p><p>“Help me.”</p><p>“Breathe in, now, breathe-”</p><p>“Help me… Malcolm, Malcolm-”</p><p>“What’s wrong?”</p><p>“-Malcolm, please, please-”</p><p>“Joey, what’s wrong? What happened?”</p><p> </p><p>He was crying. Sobbing. Howling.</p><p> </p><p>“Malcolm, please… Please…”</p><p>“Where are you, are you home? Are you home, do I need to, do you want me to come over, do you…?”</p><p>“Help me… Please, for th’ l’ve ‘f God h'lp me…”</p><p>“Joey, Joey-”</p><p>“Help me…”</p><p>“Joey, breathe, I’m here, ok?”</p><p> </p><p>A wail.</p><p> </p><p>“I’m here with you, ok?”</p><p> </p><p>Another wail.</p><p>He sounded like his mouth and nose were clogged by snot.</p><p>There was a grave 'thud’.</p><p> </p><p>“Joey!”</p><p> </p><p>He kept on crying, inconsolable.</p><p> </p><p>“I’m coming over. I’m coming over, ok? I’ll be there in a minute, ok? You stay safe, ok?”</p><p> </p><p>From the end of the receiver came a garbled cry that sounded like its existence was possible only by tearing lungs.</p><p>It sounded like a plea for help.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The door was locked.</p><p>Malcolm tried to force it open, twisting the knob several times. He blessed himself when he remembered he had gotten a copy od the keys; he blessed God when he found them in the pocket of his coat.</p><p>The door swung on its hinges.</p><p> </p><p>“Joey?” he called into the depths of the apartment.</p><p> </p><p>What little light there was highlighted a phone receiver laying on the floor.</p><p>There were no windows, inside.</p><p>It was dark, inside.</p><p>It was empty, inside.</p><p> </p><p>A noise from across the livingroom.</p><p> </p><p>There was a window.</p><p>In the kitchen.</p><p> </p><p>He dived into the shadow. It coated him from head to toe like a thick rubbery paint; moving in it, moving <em>through</em> it was like having every cell vehemently held back by invincible overgrown flora. Moving forward pushed his breath back into his lungs like a mechanical press in an attempt to fill them enough for them to burst.</p><p> </p><p>It was seconds.</p><p>It was seconds stretching into endlessness.</p><p> </p><p>And then the prothesis against his foot the kitchen the counter the unnatural light the lump on the floor crying and sobbing and turning to him and the knife.</p><p>The knife gleaming and shining and shaking.</p><p>Joey’s cheeks reflected the moonlight through the salt melted on them.</p><p> </p><p>“Help me…” he begged, holding his trembling hands out to him. The knife was clutched in his pale fingers.</p><p>In the night they looked like an old corpse’s.</p><p> </p><p>Malcolm fell to his knees in front of him, terrified, grabbing his wrists, his first instict that of checking for wet, for marks; but there was nothing. Only a clean blade offered to him in a desperate plea.</p><p> </p><p>“Please… Please, I can’t…”</p><p> </p><p>It trembled.</p><p>It trembled so much.</p><p> </p><p>“I can’t, on my own I ca… Please, please, keep it, keep it still…”</p><p> </p><p>He grabbed the handle. A moment later the knife was flying to the other side of the room and Joey was lunging towards it, broken voice trying its best to speak, arms extended to grip the blade again. Malcolm forced them below his own, wrapping him in a forceful embrace to keep them contained. He forced his head under his own to give some kind of idea of stability, something to hold onto. He hushed his garbled shrieking ravings and held him, held him tight and strong, as his mind raced and raced.</p><p> </p><p>“Hospital, I’m, I’m taking you to the hospital-”</p><p>“No!” and he saw his wide eyes face him, grey and scared and frenzied by fear; and he held him as he begged with a single word -no, no, no, no, no, no - crying harder than he had already been doing.</p><p> </p><p>Malcolm strengthened his gentle grip around him. His palms pressed kindly on Joey’s back while he murmured reassurances in his ear.</p><p> </p><p>Nobody was getting hurt.</p><p>Nobody was taking others away.</p><p>Nobody was going to the hospital.</p><p>Nobody was making their own wrists bleed.</p><p> </p><p>Joey huffed noisily through the mucus and the tears staining his brother-in-law’s shirt. His hands clenched the fabric like his life depended on it.</p><p>It might as well have.</p><p> </p><p>“Can I drive you home? To my home?”</p><p> </p><p>A soft wail.</p><p> </p><p>“I’ll stay with you. I’ll stay with you, you’ll be safe. Promise. Can I, can I drive you home? Drive you to my house?”</p><p> </p><p>He took a long breath. He tried his best to, at least. It was watery, and painful, and tired.</p><p>He gave a weak nod.</p><p> </p><p>A hand slid under his arm. It helped him on his only foot. He leaned heavily on the shorter mass, bones of carefully blown glass ready to break at the slightest movement.</p><p> </p><p>He couldn’t see.</p><p> </p><p>He couldn’t hear.</p><p> </p><p>There was a hand he was holding.</p><p> </p><p>And then he sat.</p><p> </p><p>It was soft, where he was sitting.</p><p> </p><p>He was still breathing wrong.</p><p> </p><p>A finger brushed the back of his hand and only then did he realize his palms were empty; panicked, he closed them around the alien body in desperation, mouth already attempting to drawl a plea.</p><p> </p><p>“I’m here.” the hand answered as its mirror twin cupped Joey’s frantic clutch.</p><p> </p><p>Oh.</p><p>Thank goodness.</p><p> </p><p>“I’m here.”</p><p>“Don’t go…”</p><p>“I’m here.”</p><p>“Don’t go…”</p><p>“I won’t go. I promise I won’t go.”</p><p> </p><p>Joey held onto that whispering promise with all the little strength the tears and thoughts had left him.</p><p>Malcolm crawled into the bed still clothed and guided him to lay down.</p><p>The night’s light hit grey eyes through the window’s glass; they retreated against a tear stained shirt.</p><p>His fingers balled into fists, catching fabric between them in order not to hurt the skin. A palm pressed on his shoulders; another one cupped the end of his backbone to invite him to curl up against the gentle shelter of a soft stomach. He felt a buzzing on the back of his head - the sound of a short black beard scratching near ebony hair and sickly pale skin as a chin safely nestles a foreign skull into the crook of its neck.</p><p>Joey closed his eyes for a second - a single second - and shook hard at what he’d etched and burned on the inside of his own eyelids.</p><p>A pressure all around him comforted him.</p><p> </p><p>Malcolm didn’t say a word.</p><p> </p><p>He waited.</p><p> </p><p>Waited.</p><p> </p><p>Waited.</p><p> </p><p>Until Joey was asleep, peaceful, safe.</p><p>Not shivering nor crying.</p><p>Completely.</p><p> </p><p>Only then he closed his own tired eyes.</p><p> </p><p>He lost consciousness trying his best not to think of the dimly lit kitchen.</p><p>Of its hidden shimmering, gleaming terror.</p>
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